Aikido, Judo, You Know...

New Blog

Published on 2010-07-11 13:15:00

I'm moving all the posts here to a new blog. I know I haven't posted in ages, but I'm ramping up again. Please follow me over there! Here's the new address:www.aikidoandstuff.blogspot.com

BJJ, 2/23/10

Published on 2010-02-24 12:47:00

I’ve never choked someone completely unconscious…until last night... Last night I decided to go to our school’s “BJJ Fundamentals” class instead of the regular class. I really enjoyed it. The format was laid-back, and the Professor went over some very basic concepts. We worked on the basic collar choke, and looked at key details for making it work. These included the deepness of the grip, turning your thumbs toward the guy’s head, turning your knuckles toward you, how to grab his sho

Judo, 2/6/10

Published on 2010-02-23 20:20:00

Still behind on some posts, but catching up…In our Judo lesson, we worked on our 3 entries to hip throws (mostly uchikomi). That’s what we ended up working on for most of the lesson. We did play with Osotogari a little, with the same three entries, then we looked at a combo for a little while: failed hip throw, to ouchi, to kouchi.Lastly, we worked on something from goshin jutsu that’s sort of like a shomenate/osotogari hybrid that felt completely, incredibly bad@$$. Taking a fall from a n

Aikido, 2/6/10

Published on 2010-02-21 19:01:00

Okay, I'm really behind on posting lately, but I'll catch up this week. I have an additional aikido, and 2 judo posts to write. So here are my notes on our aikido lesson from February 6::::We started with Tegatana. Pat said he was thinking about the need to get the following foot back under your center quickly. He gave some examples of how this shows up in karate as well. It’s funny how throughout the rest of the morning, this idea came up again and again, both in our Aikido lesson and Judo.We

BJJ, 1/26/10

Published on 2010-01-27 10:43:00

Last night I debated on whether or not to go to class. Right before class I got a splitting headache, but since I missed last week, I forced myself to go. In retrospect, it may have been better to skip – I don’t think I’m 100% bounced back from some sinus/cold crud I’ve been fighting nearly all of January. Consequently the intense physicality of the BJJ class seemed to wear me out more quickly and more thoroughly last night than usual. But, I persevered almost until the end. I sat out th

Aikido, 1/23/10

Published on 2010-01-24 09:27:00

Yesterday we did nothing but aikido, to balance last week's all-judo class. We did a quick review of Junana 1-10, then Pat previewed 11-17 for me (Actually, it was all of Nijusan, but I'm still a little unclear as to where the extra techniques are, so I still tend to think in terms of "junana").I've seen 11-17 before, but never played with them much. I look forward to getting into those. After running through all 17, we went back and practiced 6-10 in more detail, since those are the ones I'll n

Judo, 1/16/10

Published on 2010-01-23 20:34:00

For this class we didn't both an aikido and judo lesson - we did all judo. We went through everything we've covered in the syllabus thus far, and wow: it's a lot of stuff (with way more to come)!I won't burden you with the exhaustive list though. I seem to have lost the notes I took right after class, so I'll just touch on what sticks out in my mind.For one thing, ukigoshi is still my least favorite throw - because it's the one I'm worst at. Pat commented that my brown belt throws are better tha

More BJJ

Published on 2010-01-13 11:14:00

Last night there were a ton of people in class. One of the teacher’s affiliate schools lost their facility recently, so that class joined ours. After our warmup, we drilled a handful of ways to break our opponent’s grip when he’s defending against an armbar.At first we looked at where on his arm to put pressure when pulling. We also talked about timing; that is, waiting until he tries to re-establish his grip, when the situation calls for it (if you have time). We practiced pulling his far

First BJJ Class

Published on 2010-01-09 15:10:00

Earlier this week, I was too sick to start at the BJJ school I just joined. I'm pretty much over my sickness, but I didn't want to go to Mokuren (Pat's) dojo and risk having a relapse due to the cold weather (it's almost the same temperature in Pat's dojo as it is outside, and it was freezing this morning).I was pretty disappointed about missing, judo and aikido (again) with Pat, so I decided to go do BJJ. My buddy told me they were running the heater in there at the class I missed, so I figured

Judo, 1/2/10

Published on 2010-01-02 17:21:00

We began with our footsweep control drill. We practiced controlling uke's foot on the verge of him losing control (and "spasming" in sort of a panic). This is tough to explain.Next we played with okuri ashi harai from more of a deahi setup. We spent some time talking about the differences between deashi and okuri ashi. Okuri ashi is still like a big tangled mess in my mind...well, the throw itself isn't, but the principles we're looking for in it are still kind of new to me. You ever have a frie

Aikido, 1/2/10

Published on 2010-01-02 11:49:00

We started with a couple reps of tegatana no kata. Pat talked about how everything can be broken down into 3 parts: beginning, middle, and end, and how you can use this method to troubleshoot things that aren't working for you.Next we did releases. Pat said mine were pretty good today. It's rare that they feel good to me, so it's nice when it happens. Number 6 and 8 work so much better when evasion is my initial response. Hey, I guess maybe sometimes I try to just "do a number 6", for example, a

Happy and Humbled

Published on 2010-01-01 19:54:00

I got a great feeling this week, and thought I'd post about it.I've written about my buddy Josh, who I work with and train BJJ with. We've been friends since we were kids, and our families remain friends to this day. Josh has always been into martial arts. In fact, he was mostly responsible for me even giving grappling a second thought (I never really intended to train in judo until the last year or two). Way back in the day, Josh trained judo at the dojo at which I would eventually come to begi

Study Group, 12/30/09

Published on 2009-12-30 22:33:00

Josh and I drilled a little more tonight. We had to cut it short (1 hour) due to me hurting my elbow (wow, and it hurt like the dickens!), but I'll note what we did get to work on.We started out by warming up with several reps of the armbar drill I mentioned in my last post, only this time, I did it very slowly, focusing on 1) breathing (I always tend to hold my breath during this drill, and indeed during lots of randori too - I have to break that habit), 2) control (of my body, with my legs), a

Study Group, 12/26/09

Published on 2009-12-27 16:14:00

This time Josh and I worked on a few different things. First, we drilled a butterfly sweep from Saulo Ribeiro's DVDs. We also worked on a Little bit of the "position-choke-armbar" drill, as well as the typical armbar drill shown here: Of course we rolled a little too, but nothing too strenuous. I actually made Josh tap for the first time tonight, with choke neither of us have ever seen before. We got a good laugh out of that.

A New Beginning

Published on 2009-12-19 19:07:00

A while back, I mentioned that my grappling growth is sort of "stunted" because of my lack of different training partners. That's Pat's diagnosis anyway, and I don't disagree. But I'm going to do something about that.Last week Josh and I visited the local Gracie Barra BJJ school, which happens to be right around the corner from where we work. Seriously, it's a long football throw away from our office. We enjoyed our visit, and we plan to start training there after New Year. Some of our other fri

Judo, 12/12/09

Published on 2009-12-19 18:56:00

At the beginning of this class, I asked Pat to help me with a question I had regarding BJ Penn's armbar drill from his closed guard book. I was a little confused about how BJ was accomplishing what he was in that drill. We worked on the drill for a while, but I think it's going to take a lot more practice for me to be able to do it smoothly. We talked about something else that's been on my mind: breaking top-guy's posture when he's in your guard. I showed Pat a posture-breaking technique Josh an

Aikido, 12/12/09

Published on 2009-12-19 18:42:00

We started with walking, and I noticed I was having more balance issues than normal. Not sure what was going on there. We moved on to releases, and this was interesting. After a few reps of honasu 1-8, we tried them in a non-static way; tori and uke both began by randomly making a few steps....sort of wandering around near each other. When uke decided to attack, tori had to react and do the release from a (sometimes) less than ideal position/posture. This made the releases a little like randori,

A Little More Drilling

Published on 2009-12-13 18:17:00

Josh came over again last weekend for more BJJ drilling. We both bought BJ Penn's new book about the closed guard, and since we worked on some posture issues last week, we decided to drill some of BJ's techniques for breaking top guy's posture when he's in your closed guard. We were pretty amazed at some of the results we were getting.We also tried out Penn's armbar drill and triangle drill. These were a little tougher for me, because I have no experience with this type of motion yet. His armbar

A Little Drilling, A Little Rolling

Published on 2009-12-03 22:22:00

My buddy Josh came over on Tuesday night to do some BJJ drilling with me. We drilled a few very basic transitions for a while, then a sweep to two. As it frequently does, our drilling crept ever so slowly into light randori. Josh is far more capable than me on the ground, and he was able to help me learn a thing or two about my posture while grappling. By way of taking a breather after increasingly strenuous rolling, we watched a little of one of my Saulo Ribeiro DVDs. Then we drilled a particul

Judo, 11/28/09

Published on 2009-12-02 21:08:00

I just realized I forgot to post my judo training log from the weekend! We started out by practicing a couple of combos: deashi to osotogari and deashi to kouchigari. Amazing stuff, once again. Pat also showed me a variant of koshiguruma that's pretty wicked. On the ground, we drilled guard passing over and over and over. I need as many reps as I can get! We worked on going whichever way bottom guy wasn't resisting. That is, if he tries to stop me from stacking him and going under one leg, I can

Falling Hard

Published on 2009-11-29 22:39:00

I bought the book "Falling Hard" today, by Mark Law. He is a journalist that took up judo when he was nearly 50 years old, and wrote this book about his experiences.I read the first two chapters today, and thought I'd post two quotes from the book here:"A white belt at the dojo is like a toddler at a tea party, and demands a similar etiquette: people must take turns to play with him;it is incumbent upon everyone to encourage him, praise his simplest achievements, and not laugh when he falls over

Aikido, 11/28/09

Published on 2009-11-29 07:40:00

Well, since not writing training logs hasn't worked out so well, I thought I'd get back to it.We started with Tegatana, and considered how there are no "dead movements". None of the steps are there just to get you back to the starting place in preparation for the next step. Every motion is a "move". Thinking about it this way made it seem like a longer kata! Twice as long! With twice as much to focus on.We went through Releases 1 - 8 next. I mentioned how in 6, it's difficult for me to immediate

Soaking It All In

Published on 2009-11-25 22:14:00

Well once again, I've neglected posting training logs for a couple of weeks. I've been to class, but still have been either unmotivated or too mentally exhausted to write.If I'm honest (and why shouldn't I be - it's just us, right?), I'll admit that part of the reason I've been neglecting my training logs is that I've been experiencing some frustration in both judo and aikido. Lately, I just haven't felt like I'm progressing. Sometimes I feel like I'm regressing. So I thought maybe I was thinkin

Catching up!

Published on 2009-10-26 11:28:00

What a busy couple of months I've had! Earlier this year, due to annual audits, I had to miss about 5 or 6 weeks of training. I was thinking "Well, if I have to do that once a year, I can live with that". But recently, due to a variety of reasons, I've missed about as many classes. Sickness, vacation schedules, family outings....they've interfered heavily with my training during September and October.To make matters worse, I've been looking for a new job, then I found one, and since then I've be

Judo/BJJ Study Group, 9/21/09

Published on 2009-09-27 15:46:00

Last week we had a smaller group at our church judo study group. Three people, including myself. We reviewed all the material from the previous week, and spent a good bit of time doing that. Everyone did every technique with everyone else. For the new material, we covered some fundamental ground movements: "bridging" and "shrimping".We then went over munegatame, or side control, and 2 escapes from it: bridge-and-roll and shrimp-to-guard. I asked the guys to work on this not because I'm great at